Some business or other institutional decisions present numerous variables and require consideration of a number of different criteria. The criteria in question sometimes require trade-offs, since the problem in question may not allow for a solution that permits optimization in accordance with all criteria.
For example, managing a real estate portfolio can present significant challenges, particularly if the portfolio includes hundreds or thousands of properties. It can be difficult both to determine an appropriate strategy and to apply the strategy to generate hold/sell decisions with respect to numerous individual properties. U.S. Published Patent Application no. 2005/0187847 (“the '847 application”) is commonly assigned herewith and has some common inventors herewith. The '847 application employs approaches such as an evolutionary algorithm with pareto sorting, a target objectives genetic algorithm, dominance filtering, and user visualization to detect and fill gaps in an efficient pareto frontier, all for the purpose of automatically generating and evaluating solutions to a portfolio optimization problem.
The '847 application generally relies on machine intelligence to identify an optimal or near optimal portfolio solution, and represents an advance of the art. However, the present inventors have recognized that it may be desirable to develop alternative or back-up portfolio management techniques that rely primarily on human intelligence for solving a particular problem while providing data input, data manipulation, and data visualization support to the human decision-maker.